"I saw you working out the window," the woman said, "and I figured you could use this." She extended a bottle of Budweiser to him.

Peter Wohl noticed now that the hand holding the bottle had both an engagement and a wedding ring on the appropriate finger.

He took the beer.

"Thank you," he said, and took a pull at the neck.

"Naomi," the woman said. "Naomi Schneider."

"Peter Wohl," he said.

Naomi Schneider, it registered on Peter Wohl's policeman's mind, was a white female, approximately five feet six inches tall, approximately 130 pounds, approximately twenty-five years of age, with no significant distinguishing marks or scars.

"We're in Two-B," Naomi Schneider volunteered. "My husband and I, I mean. We moved in last week."

"I saw the moving van," Peter said.

Two-B was the apartment occupying the rear half of the second floor of what Peter thought of as the House. There were six apartments in the House, a World War I-era mansion on the 8800 block of Norwood Road in Chestnut Hill, which had been converted into what the owner, a corporation, called "luxury apartments." The apartments in the rear of the building looked out on the four-car garage, and what had been the chauffeur's quarters above it. Peter Wohl lived in the ex-chauffeur's quarters, and to the often undisguised annoyance of the tenants of the House occupied two of the four garages.

It was possible, he thought, that Mr. Schneider had suggested to his wife that maybe if they made friends with the guy in the garage apartment with the Jaguar andtwo garages they could talk him out of one of them. There had been, he had noticed lately, a Porsche convertible coupe parked either on the street, or behind the house. They could probably make the argument that as fellow fine sports caraficionados he would appreciate that it was nearly criminal to have to leave a Porsche outside exposed to the elements.

But he dismissed that possible scenario as being less likely than the possibility that Mr. Schneider knew nothing of his wife's gesture of friendliness, and that Naomi had something in mind that had nothing to do with their Porsche.

"My husband travels," Naomi offered. "He's in floor coverings. He goes as far west as Pittsburgh."

Bingo!

"Oh, really?"

He now noticed that Naomi Schneider's eyes were very dark. Dark-eyed women do not have blond hair. Naomi's hair was, therefore, dyed blond. It was well done, no dark roots or anything, but obviously her hair was naturally black, or nearly so. Peter had a theory about that. Women with dark hair who peroxided it should not go out in the bright sunlight. Dyed blond hair might work inside, especially at night, but in the sunlight, it looked… dyed.

"He's generally gone two or three nights a week," Naomi offered. " What do you do?"

Peter elected to misunderstand her. "I just had the seats out," he said. "I took them to a place downtown and had the foam rubber replaced, and now I'm putting them back in."

Naomi stepped to the car and ran her fingers over the softly glowing red leather.

"Nice," she said. "But I meant, what do you do?"

"I work for the city," Peter said. "I see a Porsche around. That yours?"

"Yeah," Naomi said. "Mel, my husband, sometimes drives it on business, but there's not much room in it for samples, so usually he takes the station wagon, and leaves me the Porsche."

"I don't suppose," Peter agreed amiably, "that thereis much room in a Porsche for floor-covering samples."

"This isnice," Naomi said, now stroking the Jaguar's glistening fender with the balls of her fingers. "New, huh?"

Peter Wohl laughed. "It's older than you are."

She looked at him in confusion. "It looks new," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am," Peter said. "But that left Coventry in February

"Left where?"

"Coventry. England. Where they make them."

"But it looks new."

"Thank you again."

"I'll be damned," Naomi said. She looked down at Peter and smiled. " You hear what happened last night?"

"No."

"About the woman who was raped? Practically right around the corner?"

"No," Peter Wohl replied truthfully. He had spent the previous day, and the day before that, the whole damned weekend, in Harrisburg, the state capital, in a hot and dusty records depository.

"He forced her into his van, did-you know-to her, and then threw her out of the van in Fairmount Park. It was on the radio, KYW."

"I hadn't heard."

"With Mel gone so much, it scares me."

"Did they say, on the radio, if it was the same man they think has done it before?" Peter asked.

"They said theythink it is," Naomi said.

Interesting, Peter Wohl thought, if it is the same guy, it's the first time he's done that.

"Naked," Naomi said.

"Excuse me?"

"He threw her out of the van naked. Without any clothes."

Well, that would tie in with the humiliation that seems to be part of this weirdo's modus operandi.

There was the sound of tires moving across the cobblestones in front of the garages, and Peter's ears picked up the slightly different pitch of an engine with its idle speed set high; the sound of an engine in a police car.

He hoisted himself off the mechanic's crawler. A Highway Patrol car pulled to a stop. The door opened, and a sergeant in the special Highway Patrol uniform (crushed crown cap, Sam Browne belt, and motorcyclist's breeches and puttees) got out. Wohl recognized him. His name was Sergeant Alexander W. Dannelly. Wohl remembered the name because the last time he had seen him was the day Captain Dutch Moffitt had been shot to death at the Waikiki Diner, over on Roosevelt Boulevard. Sergeant Dannelly had been the first to respond to the call, "Officer needs assistance; shots fired; officer wounded."

And Dannelly recognized him, too. He smiled, and started to wave, and then caught the look in Wohl's eyes and the barely perceptible shake of his head, and stopped. "Can I help you, Officer?" Wohl asked. "I'm looking for a man named Wohl," Sergeant Dannelly said.

"I'm Wohl."

"May I speak to you a moment, sir?"

"Sure," Wohl said. "Excuse me a minute, Naomi." She smiled uneasily.

Wohl walked to the far side of the Highway Patrol car. "What's up, Dannelly?" he asked.

"You're not answering your phone, Inspector."

"I've got the day off," Wohl said. "Who's looking for me?"

"Lieutenant Sabara," Dannelly said. "He said to send a car by here to see if you were home; that maybe your phone wasn't working."

"The phone's upstairs," Wohl said. "If it's been ringing, I didn't hear it."

"Okay with you, sir, if I get on the radio and tell him you're home?"

"Sure." Wohl wondered what Sabara wanted with him that was so important he had sent a car to see if his phone was working. "Tell him to give me fifteen minutes to take a bath, and then I'll wait for his call."

"You want to wait while I do it?"

"No," Wohl said, smiling. "You get out of here and then you call him."

"I understand, sir," Dannelly said, nodding just perceptibly toward Naomi.

"No, you don't," Wohl said, laughing. "The only thing I'm trying to hide, Sergeant, is that I'm a cop."

"Whatever you say, Inspector," Dannelly said, unabashed, winking at Wohl.

Wohl waited until Sergeant Dannelly had gotten back in the car and driven off, then walked back to Naomi Schneider. Her curiosity, he saw, was about to bubble over.

"I saw an accident," Peter lied easily. "I have to go to the police station and make a report."

Sometimes, now for example, Peter Wohl often wondered if going to such lengths to conceal from his neighbors that he was a cop was worth all the trouble it took. It had nothing to do with anything official, and he certainly wasn't ashamed of being a damned good cop, the youngest Staff Inspector in the department; but sometimes, with civilians, especially civilians like his neighbors-bright, young, well-educated, well-paid civilians-it could be awkward.